Page 23 of Once a Villain
Nick caught Joan as she stumbled. “What it is?” he said, voice urgent with concern. “What’s going on?”
Was this another fade-out? No. Joan still had full access to her senses. “I don’t know,” she gasped.
Even as she said that, though, she remembered the last time she’d felt like this—in a café where a dark force had ripped a hole in the fabric of the timeline itself.
As if her thought had made it manifest, a pinprick of black appeared in the air, spreading like splashed ink. Joan gripped Aaron’s arm and pulled him and Nick away from it.
She was only just in time.
Darkness bled through the alcove. Joan gasped, terrified. Thethingwas a hole in the world, edges fluttering like a torn shroud. Aaron retched again. He stumbled back—or tried to. His legs were shaking so much that he barely moved.
Nick hauled Aaron away from it with easy strength, his other arm still tight around Joan’s waist. He shoved them both behind him, and Joan realized he wasn’t experiencing the same visceral horror. He didn’t have Joan’s and Aaron’s monster sense of how wrong this was.
“What the hell is that?” Aaron choked out.
“I think it’s a tear in the timeline,” Joan managed. “A tear showing the void itself!” The terrifying nothingness that surrounded the timeline.
In the distance, a dog barked. Nick jerked his head, looking over his shoulder to the woodland garden across the lawn, and Joan followed his gaze. To her dismay, beams of light shot through the trees.
“My uncle’s mobilized the Oliver security team!” Aaron whispered. “They’ve joined the search! We have to get out of here!”
Joanwantedto go, but something was happening inside the tear now. The shadows of the void seemed to be forming into a structure. No, not a structure. A figure. Aperson.
“Joan!” Nick said urgently. “We have to go!”
“Wait,” Joan said. The shape was strangely familiar: a cloudof hair; a bony frame.Mum?Joan thought. But... it couldn’t have been Mum. Joan had never met her, wouldn’t have known her silhouette.
Color seeped in until the person inside was solid and real. A woman with bright green eyes and a halo of gray hair. Joan gasped as she finally recognized her. “Gran!”
And then the view inside the tear in the timeline was perfectly clear, all the shadows of the void gone. Even the sickening sense of horror vanished.
“Joan?” Gran was in a garden too. Inthisgarden. Except... on her side, the conservatory had different plants: trees laden with pink cherry blossoms, and huge sunset-colored chrysanthemums.
Gran seemed barely five steps away—Joan could have run over and hugged her—but at the same time, Joan had the feeling she was much farther away than she appeared.
“I’ve been trying to get a message to you.” Gran’s voice was soft and indistinct—as if she was speaking at the end of a long tunnel. “You can still fix what your sister’s done. You can restore the world to something better—but you’re running out of time.”
Seven
“Running out of time—what do youmean?” Joan had so many more questions—wherewasGran, and how was she speaking to them? But that was what came out first.
And Granwassomewhere else—behind her, a pink line of sunset ran along the horizon. Here, the moon glowed in a black sky, half-veiled by clouds.
“The security team’s coming this way!” Aaron whispered. There was more color in his face now that the shadows of the void were gone, and some of Joan’s nausea had eased too. She could still sense the wrongnessof that tear, though, thrumming like a bass note beneath everything.
Joan turned fearfully. In the woodland, lights flashed among the trees. It wouldn’t be long before the searchers continued down the lawn and into the formal garden. Or maybe the guards would come back.
“Gran,” Joan whispered. “There are people after us! We have to go!”
Gran looked over her own shoulder as if there was a threat at her end too, and Joan’s stomach dropped. Was Gran in danger? Her face was pale and lined, and she was thinner than the last time Joan had seen her. “I’ll speak quickly,” Gran whispered. “This window we have won’t last long.”
Joan tried to push aside her dismay. She wanted to talk to Gran properly, but there wasn’t time. Joanwishedthere was—she’d missed Gran so much.
“Eleanor changed the timeline,” Gran whispered. “I understand why. When the King killed your grandfather, when he killed your mother, I wanted to raze the timeline too.” Love and pain pinched her face. “I’d have done anything to bring them back.”
Joan took a sharp breath. Gran had never spoken about Joan’s grandfather; she rarely spoke of Mum.
“But I’ve seen glimpses of where you are,” Gran continued. “I’ve seen how humans are treated, the pendants they wear.” She looked heartsick. “Eleanor twisted the timeline beyond recognition. She made somethingwrong. She created a world that was never supposed to exist.”
